Oxford students participated in a demonstration inside a Tesco store on Monday, in aid of Fairtrade Fortnight.
The students, who were dressed in red, gathered inside the Tesco Metro on Cowley Road equipped with fair trade bananas with labels detailing information about trade justice and fruit producers.
At exactly one o’clock, their phones rang and they held the bananas to their ears before handing them to other unsuspecting shoppers with the words “It’s for you”.
One student from Balliol stated, “I’m here because I’m passionate about bananas”.
He commented, “There were certainly a lot of bemused looks when we handed them out, and I’m not sure if everyone got the message, but I think it was good for spreading the awareness of the overall cause.”
The protesters caused enough of a stir to be asked to leave by the Tesco staff. The store manager commented, “They are welcome to demonstrate outside, but not inside. We just asked them to leave.”
He added that the demonstrators might have been a surprise for shoppers but not for the staff. “We were prepared for this to happen. We had intelligence reports that there would be a small protest of some kind.”
The flashmob was organised by Ctrl Alt Shift, a youth initiative encouraging people to be engaged with global issues such as fairtrade, HIV/AIDS, and gender and poverty. It is associated with Christian Aid.
It was part of a wider demonstration occurring across the country, including in London, Manchester, Glasgow and Bristol. They were organised in protest of the fact that Tesco stores still stock non-fair trade bananas.
A representative from Christian Aid present in Cowley said, “We are campaigning for Tesco to stock all fair trade bananas. It doesn’t just have to be about the living wage. It makes economic sense for them to do so.”
She continued, “When Sainsbury’s and Waitrose made the decision to do so, they saw their sales rise.”
Christian Aid and Ctrl Alt Shift, along with other groups such as the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development have been helping to raise awareness in Oxford of trade issues in the past two weeks.
A Christian Aid campaigner said, “The aim of this fortnight is to get people talking about trade justice. We’ve brought the debate to colleges, such as Christ Church, and people across Oxford have been organising Fairtrade dinner parties.”
She added, “We don’t want fair trade to be an issue, we want it to be the norm.”
